Developing A Win Strategy

One of our clients in the financial industry have a big talent pool of very smart and capable individuals. They go for multi-stake holder, big complex deals, where they sell their financial solutions that help fund companies looking to acquire or merge with other companies and raise funds for big infrastructure projects etc.

The challenge for this particular client is that when they go for the big deals (which can sometimes take up to a year to win), their very smart and capable people have a very high commitment to quality, yet they don’t have a win strategy.

Developing a Win Strategy

At the start of every deal you have to sit down and create the strategy for putting together a bid, getting together the best brands and drawing together what the solution will look like. Basically, a strategy for how you’re going to fund and manage it.

However the more important meeting that needs to happen is around the question ‘How are we going to win this deal?’…

• What is it going to take in terms of matching up stakeholders?
• How are we going to communicate with the client over the course of the next 12 months? (breakfast meetings, seminars etc)
• How can we add value for the client?
• How can we provide them with thought leadership?
• How can we inspire, enthuse and build it this all into a programme?

This is called a win strategy.

It’s about not just delivering on what the client wants; it’s also about delivering a strategy based on what we need to win.

When you have that as the title for your meeting, great things start to happen. It changes the focuses from ‘how are we going to deliver on the client requirement’…

…and it moves the focus to ‘how are we going to make the client trust us, make them feel inspired, and want us to do business with them?’

Quite often you’ve got to look at things that contribute to this, such as a schedule and a list of people who own certain amounts of activity. For example, there might be a main buyer, an influencer at the client end, a technical assessor, various project managers and end users of the solutions you’re selling. You need to ask yourself the following:

• How are we managing all of those stakeholders?
• How can we ensure that they all hear about us and our work ?
• How can we show them that we have worked with them already?
• How can we put them at the centre of everything? So that we’re not talking about us, we’re talking about them.

If the above rings any bells with your organisation, you’re not alone!

We have several strategies and techniques to share in order to put you in the best position possible to win big deals. Call me on 0207 043 1582 to find out more.